Apply for grant funding of up to £2,500 to promote key messages with Brent families and communities about the Family Hubs and Start for Life offer.
The Family Hubs and Start for Life programme enables Brent to increase the support available to the youngest children and their families through improved:
- perinatal mental health
- parent-infant relationships
- parenting support
- infant feeding support
- home learning environment services
- engaging Parents and Carers to co-produce the support available
- promoting the Family Hubs and Start for Life pathway.
Background
Brent Council is one of 75 local areas who are part of the Family Hubs and Start for Life programme and has been allocated government funding to spend on the programme's minimum requirements.
The Family Hubs and Start for Life programme is managed by the Department for Education (DfE) and Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC), who work with local councils to deliver family hubs (known in Brent as Family Wellbeing Centres (FWC)) across the UK. These centres support families by providing a centralised hub of resources and services including those related to healthcare, education, and community support.
The Start for Life vision focuses on the period between conception and the age of two (the first 1,001 critical days) of a child’s life and ensuring accessible, joined-up services, available in one place, both physically and virtually for families during this period.
What do we want to achieve in Brent?
- To ensure that all families with children under five know about and can access the services they need at the earliest point through a well signposted pathway.
- To enable through integrated working identification of the most vulnerable families and ensure they receive appropriate and targeted support.
How will we do this?
By developing an integrated offer within family wellbeing centres involving the LA, health partners and our community and voluntary sector working together and making a commitment that all staff know the pathway and irrespective of which agency the contact is from, they are aware of the key milestones and can refer to these providing multiple points for families to access information and support.
What will this look like for families in Brent?
- Each family will be supported to know about and access services so that they can get the help they need as soon as possible.
- All partners (LA, health and voluntary sector) are part of the same unit supporting a family at key points both ante and post-natal and through the following years until entry to school.
- This will include access to the healthy start programme including checks at appropriate points.
- All families will have access to information about child learning and development and child and parent relationships.
- All families in Brent will have access to information about the free childcare offer for children aged 9 months to compulsory school age and transition to school.
Community Grant Scheme
- The community grant scheme has been developed to support community and voluntary sector providers, that support families with 0-2 year olds, to promote the above services to a wider range of families ensuring all Brent families can access the Family Hubs and Start for Life pathway.
- The grant funding must be used to promote the Family Hubs and Start for Life offer. This could be for example:
- Running a community event which focuses on infant feeding support.
- Co-facilitating and/ or hosting the Solihull parenting programme.
- Hosting events which focus on the importance of mental health for new parents and developing bonding.
- Hosting a community engagement event to help health and council professionals seek feedback from local families.
- Hosting community engagement events to raise awareness of Start for Life services and the Start for Life pathway.
- Producing a digital resource (eg video) to support particular communities to engage with the start for life offer.
Note that at least one of the promotional activities must be a joint event involving the Early Help service to promote and develop partnership working.
Who can apply?
Brent council is looking for organisations supporting families with 0-2 year olds to help promote the support available to new parents in Brent from the Family Hubs and Start for Life programme.
How to apply
Before making an application for funding, please read the funding terms below.